City of Clockwork
by LPDracobeatsall
Summary: So what if Sophie went back in time and told Will and Jem how their story was going to end. How Tessa seemed not to have loved either of them because she continually went back and forth between them. What would they change? How would that affect Clary and Jace? If Clary didn't have Jace, would she have survived the war? (For those who hate Tessa and think Clary is an idiot)
1. Story Change

**So I started a Clockwork Angel one a while ago but I fell off track and then I thought of this version of it. (I just really wanted to kill Tessa off) So here it is, Cassandra Claire owns all the characters from both books and the scenes that I recreated.**

* * *

Chapter 1

Will took his time getting to dinner. Jem was once again recovering from an accidental low-dosage of his medicine and Charlotte was busy overseeing the recovery of the newest addition to the institute. That left him, Jessamine, and Henry at a table for the entire length of dinner.

Maybe he would skip the affair altogether.

He smiled. Tessa. The silent brothers said she was going to wake up within the next couple of days and then she would be back to correcting and berating him as she had yesterday during her rescue. She had complained about losing her books and all he could imagine was her face when he would bring her to the library. She'd probably thank him and give him one of her wide-mouthed smiles.

He closed his bedroom door behind him, better safe than sorry, and strolled down the hallway towards Jem's room. He'd check on him first and then decide whether he could survive dinner, a task harder than slaying a million demons.

He didn't knock like usual, bursting in was one of his favorite ways of annoying Jem. Someone had to keep him on his toes, and Will was just the guy to do it.

It seems though, that today he should have knocked. Sitting on a chair next to Jem's bed where Jem was sitting up and talking was Sophie. But it wasn't their Sophie.

Well, it **was** Sophie. He could see her in the scar and alert brown eyes, both of which were now on a wrinkled face and buried beneath a bush of grey hair.

"Will," she said, her voice slightly deeper and wavering with age, "I was just about to go get you."

He was frozen in front of the door. "Sophie?" He asked, it came out like a question despite his recognition.

"Honestly, Will," Jem said. "You know it's her, now shut the door and come over here, she didn't come here just for you to stare at her."

Will pulled the door closed and slowly edged towards his friend and the old lady in front of him. "Why are you so old?"

She shot him a dirty look, "What, Will, goes through your mind that you think that's ok to say to an elderly woman?"

"She's from the future," Jem cut in, familiar with their arguments enough to know when to stop them. "She has something important for us to do."

"The future?" Will said, leaning against Jem's bed. "I assume I still look as devilishly handsome as ever?"

Sophie smiled, "Well I can't say you pulled off being dead very well this morning."

Will shrugged despite that comment making him feel like a hippo sat on his chest, "God giveth and he taketh away. You're all just lucky you could see this brilliance for as long as you did."

Sophie chose to ignore him. "As I was telling Jem, we were at your funeral when Magnus brought up that he had been working on a spell to transfer one back into the past for a little while."

"Magnus, Magnus Bane?" Will asked.

Sophie smiled. "Yes, you two come to be very close friends."

As Will processed this, she continued. "He said it was very difficult magic, and only one of us would be able to go back and even then only for a couple of hours. It would drain him, you see, and his magic would not be powerful enough to create the spell again for at least a century. Everyone agreed that it should be Tessa, seeing as how she was your wife."

Jem jumped and started asking questions at the same time Will was shouting, "My WIFE? My WIFE?"

And so she told them their future. Starting from today and up until Will's death. She told Jem of how he fell in love with Tessa and how she agreed to marry him. About how he increased his drug intake and increased his death rate leading to his eventual transformation into a Silent Brother. She told Will about his love for Tessa and how he eventually came to realize his cure was a lie and that the news came too late. She told him about what he and Tessa did the night of Jem's supposed "death" (Tessa, it seems, shared this dirty secret with her friends) and about their eventual marriage and their children. She led them through every battle with Mortiman and she left nothing out.

And then she paused.

The boys were silent. She took it as a cue to go on.

"And so this morning, Tessa declared that she would be traveling back to today. She wouldn't intervene, she merely wanted to hide in the shadows and see you again, Will. And, well, I disagreed. She is part demon, and though everyone says the shadowhunter blood seems to have won out, I know the truth. The demon blood burned away everything inside of her that was human and decent, all that was left was nastiness disguised as innocence."

She paused, looking into Will's eyes. "We never very much got along, Will. But the minute you passed I could see it in her eyes, the calculating way she watched Jem as he performed his duty as a Silent Brother. The way she watched your kids, waiting to abandon them as if she had died as well. I even thought back to all the death she caused after she was brought to the institute. And I knew. She is a devil, a wolf in sheep's clothing. And I couldn't let it happen."

"So," Will started, realizing where this was going.

She looked down, embarrassed. "So this morning, as Tessa began to step into the portal, I pushed her out of the way and entered instead."

"And now we know," Jem said. "We will not allow her to stay here with us, we will have her removed from the institute."

Sophie shook her head. "Even if she is not staying here, death and destruction will follow her. In your time her case is still a mystery and she will just be placed into a different institute. Not to mention Charlotte will be replaced for not accepting her. And, well, I think Will knows the other issue."

He did know, he had been fantasizing about that particular issue all morning. "So," Will repeated, again knowing where this was headed.

Sophie looked up and her wise, old eyes were strong. "I want you to kill her."

Jem gasped. "We can't- I won't- that's not-"

"I'll do it," Will said.

Sophie smiled and then she turned her head and looked past him. The portal was there, waiting for her to leave. She stood and shuffled through it as Jem's cries continued to erupt at Will. And then, everything returned to normal.

"Will, you will not kill an innocent-" Will slapped a hand over his parabati's mouth.

"Jem, as soon as she wakes up, I'm gone. This demon will kill people we love, seduce me, seduce you, and create offspring that God only knows how evil they will be. I have one chance to avenge my death, and I'm going to take it."

He pulled his hand away and waited for his friend's permission.

Jem looked down. Will counted the minutes.

"Sophie did say she was more demon than human." He mumbled.

"She'll leech onto you too." Will reminded him.

Jem winced. He balled his hands together on his lap. "Do it."

He looked up, eyes fierce. "Save us both."

* * *

Will closed the door softly, not yet ready to face the sleeping form on the bed. He had told Charlotte that Henry was on fire and promised to watch Tessa for her. But she wouldn't be there to watch in a couple of minutes.

He took a deep breath and felt nothing but calm determination. He would not regret this.

Turning, he saw it. It, not her.

Brown hair spread across a white pillow, pale lips open just enough for each tiny breath, light blue blushed eyelids with long lashes shadowing high cheekbones.

It was beautiful, but beauty is the way evil disguises itself.

He approached the bed, lifting his seraph blade high.

Hands steady, mind set, he smiled. "Goodbye, Tessa."

He brought the blade down and she opened her eyes. "Will!" she gasped.

Black blood bubbled up around the blade, and Will stepped back from the mess it was creating.

"Will!" she screamed. And with a roar of black flames she disappeared.

Sophie was right, she was a demon through and through.

* * *

Clary looked smiled down at Jace, watching the fire in his veins travel through him. He would be alright, he was still Jace.

He reached a hand up, toward her face, but they never touched. His hand disappeared.

"Clary!" He shouted in alarm. She jumped off the bed as he ripped the blankets away, as he slowly disappeared from the feet up.

"I'll get a Silent Brother!" She shouted, sprinting for the door where they continually stood during her visits.

"I love you Clary!" He shouted desperately, and she turned.

He was gone.

The floor seemed to rush up at her, she was falling.

"Clary,"

_Jace, I'm coming,_ she thought.

"Clary,"

_Jace, _she thought.

"Clary,"

_I'm coming._

* * *

"Clary," Simon said, shaking her. "Clary, are you alright?"

She opened her eyes. It was dark, but bright multicolored lasers illuminated the unfamiliar bodies around her as they swayed and grinded on each other. She was on the ground.

"Simon?" She asked, automatically reaching to let him pull her up.

"I thought you just weren't listening, but then you fainted. Are you feeling ok? You should probably go home, get some rest." Simon's eyes roamed over her face, searching.

A glimmer of red caught her eye and she looked past Simon at it. A girl, tall and skinny in an old-fashioned floor-length gown was walking backwards through the crowd. Her long black hair fell past her hips and a fist-sized ruby glinted on a chain around her neck, the red that had caught Clary's eye. She was staring, beckoning, at a boy following her as though he was in a trance, blue hair spiking straight up.

_I've seen this before_, thought Clary, but just as the thought came it disappeared. She was left with a slight feeling of déjà vu. The girl leaned back against what seemed to be a supply closet and pulled up her skirt to show kinky thigh-high boots. The boy closed in and opened the door behind her, spilling them through the doorway. Just as the door was about to close, Clary caught a dark head slipping in after them.

She sighed, just another couple doing it in a closet.

"-sound ok?" Simon was finishing. She nodded, she hadn't heard anything he had said but she trusted him. Her head swam, something didn't feel right.

Simon grabbed her arm gently, holding her steady, and led her out of the Pandemonium Club.


	2. Avoiding Disaster

Chapter 2

Clary stared down into the greasy hills in her slice of pizza. Why did everything feel so wrong? This wasn't anywhere near the first time she had slept over at Simon's and nothing had happened to make her night bad. After all, just this morning she was dancing at Pandemonium like usual, and the only reason she had fallen was because she was tired. Right?

So then why did she feel like she was missing something?

Simon was still staring at her as if at any moment she might die, right there on the spot.

"Stop," she said, shooting him a glare. "I'm FINE. I slept for twelve hours, there is nothing wrong with me."

He nodded, looking down. "I know, I know, you just scared me. I thought I was going to have to give you CPR or something."

She laughed. "Well lucky that you didn't have to."

He blushed. "Yeah, I would have had to bleach my mouth or something after."

Her eyebrows twitched together. That was taking it a little far, wasn't it? She looked back down at the pizza in her hand.

"So…uh…was your mom cool with us going over to support Eric?"

She had called her mom on the taxi ride over to Simon's, explaining to her why she would not be home until late that night. Her mother had seemed fine, if not a little worried for her health, but had stressed that she be home by midnight that night.

"But you'll be home by midnight, correct?" She had asked repeatedly followed by a, "I have something really important to discuss with you before tomorrow."

It was all very sporadic and nagging, the way her mother usually behaved whenever Clary expressed even a little bit of freedom.

"Yeah, she's fine with it." Clary said and Simon flipped on a made-for-TV movie and the need for talking ended.

Hours later, they walked into the coffee house where Eric was going to give his truly horrendous poetry reading.

"You find the seats, I'll get the drinks?" Simon offered. Clary nodded, drifting towards the mismatched couches.

She found one, hidden in shadows and near the back that would be perfect if an emergency escape was needed. Plopping down into the worn cushions that swallowed up her skinny hips, she rolled her shoulders. She would leave early tonight, to make sure she got enough sleep to drown out the feeling off loss she kept having.

"Hey,"

Clary turned. Behind her couch and to the left a little was a girl sitting at a bar-table. She leaned toward Clary. "Is he your boyfriend?" She pointed at Simon, making his way, slowly, across the sea of furniture.

Clary looked the girl over, a weird tightening happened in her chest when she thought of her checking out Simon. "No," Clary answered after a moment.

The girl quirked her eyebrows and opened her mouth for another question.

"No trays, no lids," Simon said placing the steaming cups down on the coffee table in front of the couch.

The girl leaned away, suddenly interested in the texture of the table she was sitting at.

"Thanks," Clary said. She stopped, should she tell him? He sat down next to her and took a sip of his coffee. She leaned over. "Behind us, red shirt, thinks you're hot."

He raised his eyebrows in acknowledgement.

"How long ago did he pass by?" He asked pretending to look out the windows behind them as an excuse to look at the girl.

He turned back and lowered his voice. "Not my type. And anyway, I'm kind of into someone else."

Clary raised her eyebrows, this was the first she had heard of this. "Oh yeah? Who?"

Simon's face was turning red. First the ears, then the neck, and then his cheeks. "Well, umm, it all started- well not really started because I knew I liked- because I was talking to Eric and, you know, complaining about my lack of a girlfriend. And he listed a couple of the single girls that he knew but I told him that wouldn't work because I already liked someone. And I told him who. And he, well you know Eric, he said I should tell her, and so I figured I should, you know, tell you. Not tell you as in tell YOU, but you know-"

"So who is it?" Clary asked, a little bored with his rambling.

"Umm," he licked his lips, glanced once around the room, and started tapping his foot. "Well…it's…it's umm…you."

"What?" Clary lost the little smile that had been teasing her lips.

Simon looked down at his lap. "I…like…you."

Loud feedback sounded from the microphone at the front.

"Look, Simon, I-"

Clary's phone went off. She dove for it. "Hello?"

"Clary?" Her mom sounded winded.

"Testing, testing," Came a loud reply from the front of the room.

"Hold on a sec, mom, I can't hear you," She left the couch, and Simon, and stood outside next to the door. "Alright, what did you say?"

"Honey, I need you to come home right now."

A protest started on her lips but then died. What was waiting for her back in that coffee shop? The last awkward moments left of her friendship with Simon? "Yeah, yeah, okay, give me a sec to grab a cab okay? And I'll be right home."

"Perfect," her mom sounded relieved.

Minutes later she gave the cabbie her address and settled back into the seat. She pulled out her phone. _Sorry my mom needs me at home, it's urgent. Come over tomorrow to talk about it, okay?_ She texted. Waited.

_Fine, see you then._

It was the most she could allow herself: the rest of the day to ignore the fact that her best friend had a crush on her. And that she did not feel the same.

She left the cab in front of her old brownstone, now a few dollars short, and entered into the hall. Madame Dorothea's door was closed and no light spilled under the crack between the door and the floor. Mounting the wide staircase, Clary reached her own door only to hear conversation leaking out of the thin walls.

"-said she'd be here in a couple of minutes." Her mother's voice.

"I am a busy man, Jocelyn, I can't wait around for every teenage girl to feel like coming home."

"She-"

"Especially when I think you and I both know who could be showing up at any moment."

Clary rushed to fit her key in the lock. What were they talking about?

"Clary! Thank goodness," her mother met her at the door, closing it behind her. "This is-"

"Clary would you come here a moment?" The man asked. Clary gasped.

"Your eyes!" She shouted, sounding like an impolite five-year-old.

"Clary," Her mother scolded.

But it was the eyes, cats' eyes, lined in charcoal and staring at her that held her attention.

"Yes, strange aren't they?" The man continued dreamily. Her eyes stayed locked on his, but her vision swam. She felt strangely as if she were floating. "But, you have no need to worry yourself with them," He continued in the soft careful tones. "In fact, I'm sure you've seen many strange things like these this past year, haven't you?"

Suddenly visions of her talking with Simon at Central park and seeing little flying people came back. She remembered walking down the street and a man suddenly being murdered with an arrow in front of her, and then watching him disappear. Dozens of strange memories that she did not think were hers, because they were clearly illogical, swam into focus.

She shuddered, what was happening?

"That's right, they are unpleasant. But you can let them go. Let them go Clary." And because he asked her to, she did.

* * *

"Next year the same time?" Jocelyn asked Magnus while paying him. Clary lay unconscious at their feet.

Magnus folded the money into one of the pockets on this leather, studded pants. "Send me the new address as soon as you get settled."

Jocelyn nodded, stepping over Clary and leading Magnus to the door. "Of course."

Magnus turned and left, and Jocelyn surveyed the task in front of her. She may have quit being a shadowhunter years ago, but muscles always remember what they used to do.

She grunted under the weight of her daughter, shifted her position, and proceeded down the stairs, leaving the apartment for the final time. Dorothea's door opened without her having to knock and she crept through the parlor and came to a stop in front of the portal.

"He left with the bags a half-hour ago." Dorothea's gravelly voice drifted from the far corner. Jocelyn could make out her hunched form in the shadows. She thanked the stars that Luke had been there to take her belongings, there was no way she could have carried them with Clary comatose.

"You will change its course after I am through?"

"He will not find you," Dorothea guaranteed, and Jocelyn believed her.

She took a breath and grabbed the doorknob.

Falling was always the hardest part, now harder with a body in her arms. Jocelyn relaxed her shoulders and her body prepared itself, after years training, for impact. She rolled on the hard packed dirt, protecting Clary from as much damage as possible, and came to a stop.

A figure rushed in from the path between the shoulder height corn in front of her. Luke looked down at her.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded and handed Clary up to him. He took one glance at her face and sighed in disgust. "You had her swiped. Didn't you?"

Jocelyn stood and began leading the way towards the towering farmhouse and barn in the distance. "It's the last time, I swear. After this, we'll hopefully have another decade free and I'll tell her."

Luke laughed, loud and harsh.

"I will," she said sternly, stopping to look him in the eye. "She was too young before and then he kept getting to close to finding us, it wouldn't have been safe for her to know. Now we're moving again and we have time."

Luke brushed past her. "When a new problem comes up, I want you to remember you said that."

Jocelyn hated that she knew he was right.


End file.
